Post-Christmas Post

Another Christmas has come and gone, this one flashing by like a comet. Somewhere in the middle of December I realized the month was flying by, and it certainly didn’t slow down any as Christmas approached. Last week was a flurry of last minute shopping and visiting with friends, all of course while putting in a daily appearance at work.

Saturday – Christmas Eve Eve - we packed up our new truck and headed north to my sister’s place in Huntsville. And thank gawd for the new vehicle, as Santa’s sleigh had nothing on the amount of presents we fit into the back! With gifts for Mom, Dad, Janet, Drew, Ian, Andrew, and of course our own gifts for each other and Lilo – not to mention all of the presents for the three of us from Vone’s family in Manitoba – we didn’t wait long to put the cargo capacity of the Ford Escape to the test.

We ate like kings for three days, sharing the dinner duties amongst the three family-units. Mom and Dad started things off deliciously on Christmas Eve Eve with homemade seafood chowder – Dad’s from-scratch and very awesome recipe which was kicked-up an extra notch by the fresh cod fillets, crab meat, jumbo shrimp, and baseball-sized scallops that I picked up on Saturday morning from the St Lawrence Market. Vone and I followed up on Christmas Eve with lemon and coriander chicken Tikka on basmati rice, homemade tandoori chicken, and some not-so homemade but very yummy Samosas from an awesome little supermarket in our neighbourhood. Christmas dinner was the traditional roasted turkey, but Dad and Janet dug up a full menu from the Our Compliments magazine in IGA’s and Sobeys’s that included roasted Balsamic fig asparagus, maple baby carrots with bacon and rosemary, forest mushroom and pine nut stuffing, and scalloped Yukon gold and sweet potatoes. Yum-ma.

Christmas day was again, a flurry of activity (there seems to be a reoccurring theme here…). With nine people in the house, three of which are under 6, the gift wrapping starts very early, takes many hours, and is punctuated by various screams of joy and excitement, as well as occasional tears and tantrums. Thank goodness the Christmas Eve drinks were consumed in moderation, as this would have been very difficult to take with even the slightest of hangovers. After a couple cups of coffee, it was a total blast – seeing Andrew and Ian get so excited over all of their super-cool gifts was a lot of fun. (and they did get a lot of cool shit!). Lilo clearly doesn’t comprehend this whole Christmas thing yet, but she does know toys, and she loves wrapping paper, and I think she feeds off our excitement for the whole thing.

Our Christmas visit with my family was short this year. After just 3 days, we returned to the city on Boxing Day night as Vone is working the latter half of this week. Lilo and I have spent the week at home, with my off work and her on a little holiday from day care. Three days later, and we’re still discovering the various features of all of her Christmas presents. It’s been a great couple of days though I honestly wish the bulk of the fun could happen after noon, instead of so early in the morning as Lilo seems to like. But apparently 8AM really is the best time of the day to catalog all of the sounds from the various buttons and gizmos on her new Diego Cruiser.

Lilo's 1st visit with Santa

A couple of weeks ago Lilo and Vone went to the HBC kids holiday party. Lilo had a blast - running everywhere. It was all so exciting.
Thanks to a nice lady in line for Santa who held a spot for us, Lilo was able to sit on Santa's knee. She was a doll and gave a perfect smile for the camera - she's turning into such a ham.

Merry Christmas everyone!!

The Evolution of Parenthood (a.k.a. coming to terms with being old)

This past Friday night we hired a babysitter for the first time and went out on a date. Now it’s by no means the first time we’ve been out of the house without Lilo in the past year – we have left her with family on a number of occasions and once with a friend when Lilo was only a few months old. But this is was our first experience with a babysitter that isn’t a friend or family member – and interestingly it was her first babysitting experience as well.

A few months ago, while at Tim and Lauren’s unofficial baby shower, we were chit-chatting with one of their friends, Jonathan, about how we needed to seek out a babysitter in our neighbourhood – a responsible teenager that lived close-by and could come over every now and again to look after Lilo while we sought some freedom. Fortuitously, Jonathan mentioned that his teenaged daughter Katie was looking to get into the babysitting game. Perfect! They live not far away, and we know Jonathan well enough to know that his daughter would be very responsible.

Katie stopped by with Jonathan the next day – Lilo’s birthday party – for a chance to meet her quickly (although with a house full of people, in hindsight this turned out to be a less than convenient first meeting!). Nearly two months went by, and Vone and I couldn’t find a free weekend to get out of the house. Between trips out of town, parties that we took Lilo to, and out-of-town guests, every weekend was booked. A few weeks ago we forced ourselves to ‘book’ a date night – and after confirming Katie was available we jumped at the chance for some freedom this past Friday.

The whole process introducing Katie to Lilo, explaining Lilo’s little quirks to Katie, and running through all sorts of long-shot challenges and solutions was a little surreal. It just doesn’t seem very long ago that I was in her shoes, as the teenaged babysitter, trying to absorb all of the worry-wart points that the parents were spitting out at me when all I really cared about was how to work the TV, and whether I was allowed to drink the Coke in the fridge. Katie absorbed it all, and asked a fair-number of other well placed questions related to care for Lilo (not to the location of snack food, like I would have done). I knew we were leaving Lilo in good hands.

At the risk of sounding melodramatic and stereotypical, it was a little weird to be out of the house without Lilo. It’s not that we didn’t trust Katie, or Lilo, but rather it took some getting used to - that we were now parents that hired a baby sitter. To top it off, instead of doing something cool and hip downtown, we hit a Casey’s Bar and Grill in the middle of a box-store plaza, followed by a movie at the Cineplex Odeon on the other side of the parking lot. Needless to say, I felt old.

The movie was great (“Stranger than Fiction” with Will Farrell – I definitely recommend it). Even if I did check my watch 15 times during the last hour of the movie, just to make sure some dope at the Cineplex hadn’t erred in estimating the movie’s running time at exactly 1 and 53 minutes. We rushed home afterwards and found the while Lilo had tested Katie with one of her late-evening ‘I don’t wanna sleep, I just wanna bang on the drum all night’ moods. Katie had handled it all like an old-pro, and by the time we got home Lilo was soundly asleep.

So now we’re not just parents, we are old parents with a regular babysitter that go out to dinner at cheap chain restaurants in suburban strip-malls and cheesy movies at the Cineplex. And this weekend, we might just be buying a minivan. Stay tuned for my impending mid-life crisis…

Let the Self-Editing Begin...

We haven’t posted anything in quite a while, and so I thought it was time for a bit of an update…

On Sunday on this past week, Lilo passed a bit of significant milestone in her (sometimes too fast) development from baby into little girl. She was playing in the middle of the living room, while Mummy and Daddy assumed our normal Sunday afternoon horizontal positions on the couch and love seat. Lilo was banging her hands on the small lady-bug xylophone she received for her 1st birthday, as part of a pack of musical instruments from Kelly, Steve, and Izzie.

“Lilo,” Vone called from the love seat, “See the yellow drumstick in the kitchen? Go get the yellow drumstick.”

And sure enough, Lilo looked into the kitchen, saw the yellow drumstick, and marched her way over to pick it up. She brought it back to the middle of the living room, and proceeded to bang-out a happy tune on the xylophone. Seems like a small thing, but Mummy and Daddy were giddy with excitement. With this one simple act – the first time Lilo has followed such a simple direction – she showed to us that she now understands the words that are coming out of our mouths.

Uh oh.

Each stage of Lilo’s development has dictated some adjustments on our part. First she crawled, and we had to ensure there was nothing troublesome on the floor. Then she stood, and we had to make sure there was nothing troublesome on the tables. Then she walked, and we had to put gates on the stairs. Now she understands, and we have the even larger challenge of making sure nothing troublesome comes out of our mouths. Yes ladies and gentlemen, self editing has come to our household – and if Vone has her way, the swear jar won’t be far behind.

A couple of recent photos:
Lilo sporting the outfit Uncle Bri bought her a year ago,

when she was first born (sans the matching hat). Vone loves picturing Brian in the

children's clothing section picking this out.

Lilo chilling on the couch at this past weekend's Blocko.